Nycb: Beauty With Fire

March 21, 1985|By Kristy Montee, Dance Writer

As galas go, the opening Tuesday of the Palm Beach Festival was decidedly unspectacular. The dank West Palm Beach Auditorium was about half-filled and the bejeweled core of first-nighters couldn`t muster the energy for even one curtain call. But the New York City Ballet dancers persevered, delivering a dazzling program that showed why NYCB remains the most unique ballet company in the world.

Returning to South Florida for the first time in four years to open the Palm Beach Festival, NYCB offered a program more imaginative than that of most galas: no opulent costuming to ogle, no pyrotechnics to applaud. Just quiet moments of pure beauty balanced with some fire and flash.

The program opened with George Balanchine`s touchstone ballet, Concerto Barocco. Created in 1941, this work became a prototype of the neo-classic plotless ballet that formed the basis of Balanchine`s style. It is totally devoid of sentimentalism; whatever mood it created derives straight from the score. Set to Bach`s double violin concerto, it is perhaps the best example of the late choreographer`s prime quest: a perfect visualization of the music.

Led by the well-paired Judith Fugate and Heather Watts, the ballet was lovingly performed. Much of the beauty of this piece comes from watching the intimate interplay between the principals and the corps, which performed superbly. The adagio pas de deux between Watts and Daniel Duell was stunning.

Jerome Robbins` Antique Epigraphs followed, and with its quiet tenderness, sustained the mood of Barocco. This work, set to dreamy, vaguely exotic music by Dubussy, owes much to Robbins` earlier work, Afternoon of a Faun (also to Debussy). The earlier precedent is Nijinsky, who experimented with similar archaic references and two-dimensional movement in his 1912 ballet of the same name.

The same simplicity of movement is at work here, but Epigraphs has none of Robbins` usual theatrical bent or Nijinky`s tension. In his Faun, he transfered the story to a modern ballet studio to have it serve as a contemporary comment on love and narcissim. But Epigraphs is more minimalist: It is a ballet built of totally still points and serene mood. Robbins derives some great moments of beauty from the simple posing of his women like marble statues.

The ballet opens with eight women in sheer Grecian-style gowns, standing in profile against a brilliant sea-blue background. Their two-dimensional, geometric moves recall Greek friezes, beautiful figures frozen on an urn. As dancers sit in attentive poses at the side, the four principals perform solos, or even partner each other with extreme gentleness. Principals Kyra Nicols, Stephanie Saland and Maria Calegari were wonderful. In her first role created for her, corps member Simone Schumaker showed herself to be a dancer to watch.

In contrast, the last two ballets on the program were pairings of turbulence and passion.

Suzanne Farrell delivered an impassioned performance in her star-vehicle ballet, Tzigane. Wearing flame-red gypsy tatters, Farrell paid homage to Ravel`s atmospheric music and Balanchine`s sensuous choreography. Farrell is an amazing performer and in her long opening solo to the accompaniment of a pleading gyspy violin, she is utterly enchanting. Although Ib Andersen delivered some powerful dancing of his own, both he and the corps are almost superfluous here, so dominant is Farrell`s personality.

The final ballet was the new collaborative effort between Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, Brahms/Handel. Tharp, who has become a choreographic gun-for-hire producing well-received works for American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet, makes her first entree into NYCB with this work. Perhaps it is only because Tharp`s style is more obvious, but it seems that this ballet is so thoroughly Tharpian in look that Robbins` contribution is hidden. Given the minor controversy among NYCB management over allowing an outsider choreographer into its ranks, perhaps the shared billing is more a gesture than anything.

Whatever, this ballet shows the modernist Tharp ferociously at work on her latest preoccupation, that of poking around classical ballet`s nooks and crannies.

On a strictly classic framework she hangs some typically wild Tharpian moves and witticisms: aggressively flexed feet, cartwheel lifts and dancers taking precarious dives all over the stage. With 28 dancers, this is an overly populated and frenetic looking ballet. The group is divided into two ``teams,`` one dressed (by Oscar de la Renta) in brilliant turquoise and led by the brilliant allegrist Merrill Ashley, the other in kelly green, led by the more languorous Maria Calegari.

This is an extremely busy ballet, dense with bodies and steps. It is so filled with motion that there are moments when the eye is overwhelmed. But the important thing here seems to be energy, and there is an overabundance of that, too.